Q: You just wrote a column about leaving air conditioning repairs to the experts.

Well, I recently went to my local shop because my car was having trouble starting. There was no reason for anyone to look at my air conditioning.

A few days after I got my car back, I tried turned on the air conditioning, and it was gone. Dead. Nada.

It was absolutely fine before I had taken it in. I called and asked if the mechanics could have damaged the air conditioning while working on the car.

“Absolutely not,” was the reply. They were nowhere near the air conditioning in my 1999 Mustang, they said.

They were, however, happy to give me a quote for new air conditioning. As was another shop.

Finally, after many issues with the first shop, we took the car to the dealer, who called to say that a prong had been stuck in our connector. It had damaged the connector, so I would need a new one. So, we bought one, and the air conditioning was fine.

My question to you: Since everyone I have talked to says there is no way that prong got there by itself, should I go to the authorities with my complaint about the local shop?

It’s really hard to find a reliable shop, and the dealer is very expensive. What should I do?

A: Oh boy! Sometimes car repair can really be a headache. When you called the first shop to tell them the air conditioning wasn’t working, did they offer to have you bring it in so they could verify the cause? If they simply blew you off on the phone, that doesn’t speak well for their integrity.

In a case like this, perhaps they could have said, “Bring it in. We’ll check it out. If it’s something we did, we’ll fix it. If the fault is not related to the repairs made, we’ll show you why and provide an estimate to fix it. You would need to pay for the diagnostic time and repair.”

How anyone can give a quote for “new air conditioning” is beyond me, as a repair to the existing system, with a possible component replacement, would be the normal course of action.

I’m assuming by “prong” you may be referring to a test pin inserted into the back side of an electrical connector. Done carefully, this is an appropriate way to sample the voltage of a circuit passing through the connector.

It’s tricky to say if the prong was inserted by the first repair shop’s technician without knowing if the connector was related only to the air conditioning system or part of a larger wiring harness. Harness connectors can have perhaps a dozen or two circuits passing through them, of very diverse purposes.

The California Bureau of Automotive Affairs looks into these matters on a routine basis and tries to find an equitable solution. Questions their investigator might ask are if previous air conditioning repairs had been performed, which connector is this, where is it located and certainly a lot more, once facts become better understood. You can view the process and file a complaint online at: www.dca.ca.gov/webapps/bar/complaints.php.